The European Commission (EC) has announced that it has completed its in-depth investigation of support measures for Italian steelmaker Ilva S.p.A. The commission has concluded that two loans granted by Italy in 2015 to support Ilva involved illegal state aid. Italy must now recover this undue benefit of about €84 million from Ilva.
The commission has also investigated three other support measures but has concluded that they do not qualify as state aid, because they are either in line with market conditions, not imputable to the Italian state, or because they do not involve public money. This is in particular the case for more than €1.1 billion in funds transferred from Ilva’s owners to the company in June 2017, and which are earmarked to remedy serious environmental shortcomings of the operation of Ilva's Taranto plant.
According to the European Commission, the state aid decision does not affect the investigation of the acquisition of Ilva's assets by ArcelorMittal InvestCo, global steel giant ArcelorMittal's consortium with Italian steel processor Marcegaglia, on which it will take a separate decision under EU merger rules.